Moreover, *one* down year in PC sales hardly indicates the permanent death of the PC market. IMO, it mostly indicates a major recession, combined with a flood of almost-new surplus PCs from dot.bombs, combined with fairly recent upgrades due to Y2K.
While I don't expect the death of the PC market, I think it's going to be flat for the forseeable future, absent some hot new use for PCs. I base this on my own experience. I'm a bigtime computer geek and I've been sticking with my 2-year-old 733 MHz system because there's been no compelling reason to upgrade. It's been sufficient for anything I've wanted to do since I bought it, and that includes some fairly intensive uses like gaming, Photoshop, database/website constuction, programming, etc. If somebody like me is happy with an older machine, then the average user is definitely not going to find a need for a new one, and I think the vast majority of PCs sold now are going to be for new purchases, not replacements for existing computers. The only thing I see on the horizon that could change the situation is digital video, and I don't notice a lot of interest from consumers in that yet.
Just my personal 2 cents. |
